Europe needs a new generation of industrial giants

Belgium and Europe should be home to an AI infrastructure company that matters to the world. That is the ambition behind Northsea-1: Europe's next-generation AI infrastructure with a path to North Sea renewable power.

Much of the conversation about AI concerns how our existing businesses will use it. Their competitiveness depends on getting that right. But there is another critical opportunity here: building the infrastructure those businesses will rely on for decades to come.

The companies that build and operate that infrastructure will help determine what it costs to develop a model, put it into production and improve it. They will own productive assets, build operating expertise and establish relationships that other businesses grow around.

We know what such companies can mean to a region. A successful industrial business creates opportunities well beyond its own balance sheet. Suppliers invest around it. Customers develop products that its capacity makes possible. Engineers acquire knowledge they can carry into the next undertaking. Over time, people build their lives around the work it creates.

This is the region of ASML, NXP and imec, of DEME, BESIX and Jan De Nul. Our companies help build some of the world’s most ambitious infrastructure. The ambition we bring home should match the ambition we take to the rest of the world.

We should expect more globally important companies to be built here. We should give our people the chance to build them.

Europe cannot afford to lose the people who could build its next industries. We have to give them work that matches their ambition. An engineer in Belgium should be able to do the most ambitious work of their life here. Europeans who moved abroad to build their careers in San Francisco or New York should be able to look home and see a project worth coming back for. A researcher should have a path from a breakthrough to a business that grows here. People from elsewhere should have a reason to come and join them.

Those possibilities begin with someone prepared to commit capital and take responsibility for an operation that has yet to exist.

For Belgium and Europe, this is an ambition worth putting our talent, capital and reputation behind.

At Northsea-1, we are building infrastructure for companies to run, train and evaluate models. Our commercial conviction is that the hardware should follow the workload: select specialized compute for the work it does well, then build the software that turns that advantage into a service customers can use. One platform should absorb the differences between architectures, so customers can put their effort into their models and products.

Customers deserve competitive economics, reliable delivery and control, whether they buy managed services or rent capacity. We have to earn their business on those terms.

Our longer ambition connects that infrastructure directly to renewable power from the North Sea. Energy will shape the cost of AI and how far customers can scale it. Building that connection means doing the work across power supply, grid access and physical deployment. We want compute and energy to be developed as one industrial undertaking.

The difficult part is getting capable people and organisations to commit to the same project. A customer needs confidence that capacity will be delivered. An infrastructure partner needs confidence that customers will use it. Capital needs a credible plan for both. Waiting for every piece to become certain on its own can keep an ambition permanently out of reach.

Our job is to bring those commitments together and turn them into working capacity.

Each deployment develops a team that knows how to operate it, suppliers that learn to serve it and customers that learn what they can build on it. The next deployment benefits from that experience. So does the next company. That is how an industry takes root. We should be determined to grow one here.

The next generation will inherit the results of the commitments we make now. Let’s leave them companies they can build on, knowledge they can take further and the confidence to attempt something bigger. We want the next founder to look at Northsea-1 and see what is possible here.

If you are building models, planning substantial compute demand or can help turn this infrastructure into reality, we want to work with you.

Europe’s next industrial giants will begin with people prepared to build them. We intend Northsea-1 to become one.